Remembering Brownie and Eating Her Crunchy Coconut Cookies

SAM_1216

A couple of weeks ago, by sharing with you all Nancy’s Pork Chops and Apples, we remembered Brownie Schrumpf who wrote for this paper. At the very end of the column I asked if anyone of you readers was Nancy, or knew who Nancy is.

Several of you wrote to say you knew Brownie and recalled her fondly. I can’t tell you how grand it was for me to read your notes and to think about Brownie’s influence on lives in our corner of Maine. And, by golly, Nancy of the pork chops herself got in touch.

Nancy Grant was a good friend of Brownie’s. They both grew up in Readfield but since Brownie was older than Nancy, Nancy didn’t get to know Brownie until she was at the University of Maine. They both belonged to an international woman’s group, Women of the World, at the University. Meeting monthly, members would cook a meal from their home country, and Brownie and Nancy used to do a Thanksgiving dinner for the group. Nancy recalls that Brownie was a fun person who got along with people very well. Brownie was famous for her Christmas party and that she used to give a butcher knife to brides as a wedding gift.

Nancy doesn’t remember where she got the pork chops and apples recipe, and she doesn’t recall ever serving it to Brownie. Nancy contributed that recipe for a cookbook assembled by the Methodist church women and she thinks that Brownie probably found it there.

Jean Roberts of Orono and her husband regarded Brownie and Bill Schrumpf as their dearest friends and remembered that the Schrumpfs and their neighbors Barney and Addie Deering used to set out a picnic table between their houses for a Maine Saturday night supper. “There were always extra places at the table. We were invited our first Saturday in Maine,” Jean wrote. Jean also remembers the mounds of popcorn balls that Bill and Brownie made for Halloween trick-or-treaters.

Brownie was tiny – about five feet tall. Millie Cannon wrote, “If you saw a big sedan, seemingly driverless, about Orono, you could be pretty sure very petite Brownie was behind the wheel.” Millie attended several of Brownie’s cooking demonstrations, she said, has both her cookbooks, and read Brownie’s column faithfully.

Julia Hathaway wrote to say that Brownie had made all the goodies for the blood drive in Orono and remembers sticking around after donating blood “to eat all the goodies she put on my plate.” Julia’s daughter Amber was two years old when Julia took Amber a Women of the World lunch. “She was cranky the way hungry toddlers get. Brownie came over and announced to Amber that she didn’t care what mom said–the two of them were getting desert first. Amber was shy then. But after a moment of surprise, she took her hand. They came back with a plate of goodies and Amber grinning ear to ear.”

“I don’t think,” Julia wrote, “they could create the situation Brownie wouldn’t have known just what to do in.”

We ought to have another of Brownie’s recipes here. I poked around in Memories from Brownie’s Kitchen, which I own, and found Crunchy Coconut Cookies. Since I live with a man who thinks crunchy cookies are the best, possibly the only sort worth eating, I thought these might appeal. And how. Apparently, I could make these early and often.

My only advice to you about them is to make sure you set them fairly far apart on the cookie sheet because they spread. I used unsweetened coconut but I suppose the usual would be fine. Keep a sharp eye on them because once they start to brown up, they can shoot in a flash past the gorgeous golden phase to overdone. Start checking at ten minutes. In my 375 degree oven, twelve minutes was fine.

Brownie's Crunchy Coconut Cookies
Serves: Makes 5-6 dozen
 
Ingredients
  • 1 cup butter
  • 1 ½ cups sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1½ cups flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1¼ cups rolled oats
  • 1 cup grated coconut
Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
  2. Grease cookie sheets or line with parchment paper.
  3. Cream together the butter and sugar. Beat in the egg.
  4. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt, and add to butter and egg mixture.
  5. Stir in the oats and coconut.
  6. Roll in small balls (an inch to inch-and-a-half in diameter), place on cookie sheet at least three inches apart, and flatten slightly with a fork dipped in flour.
  7. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, and cool on a cookie sheet.

 

Sandy Oliver

About Sandy Oliver

Sandy Oliver Sandy is a freelance food writer with the column Taste Buds appearing weekly since 2006 in the Bangor Daily News, and regular columns in Maine Boats, Homes, and Harbors magazine and The Working Waterfront. Besides freelance food writing, she is a pioneering food historian beginning her work in 1971 at Mystic Seaport Museum, where she developed a fireplace cooking program in an 1830s house. After moving to Maine in 1988, Sandy wrote, Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and Their Foods at Sea and Ashore in the 19th Century published in 1995. She is the author of The Food of Colonial and Federal America published in fall of 2005, and Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving History and Recipes from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie which she co-authored with Kathleen Curtin. She often speaks to historical organizations and food professional groups around the country, organizes historical dinners, and conducts classes and workshops in food history and in sustainable gardening and cooking. Sandy lives on Islesboro, an island in Penobscot where she gardens, preserves, cooks and teaches sustainable lifeways.